
Class 

Book 









A SERMON 



ON THE 



.4 "V" 



mmwim rrf %k^\m J tain, 



BY 



REV. MARVIN R. VINCENT 



SECOND EDITION. 



"/ 



A SERMON 



ON THE 



Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, TROY, 




OX SUNDAY MORNING APRIL 23, 1865, 



BY THE PASTOK. 



REV. MARVIN R. VINCENT. 

n 



SECOND EDITION. 



TROY, N . Y . : 

A. W. SCRIBNER, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, CANNON PLACE. 

1865. 



.8 






Troy, April 24, 1865. 
Rev. M. R. Vincent : 

Dear Sir. — The undersigned having listened, with great 
pleasure, to your discourse on the 23d instant on the death of our beloved 
President, and heartily approving its sentiments, respectfully request a copy 
of it for publication. 

Very Respectfully, &c, 

J. F. Winslow, John E. Wool, 

A. L. Holley, Giles B. Kellogg, 

David Cowee, J. A. Millard, 

II. J. King, Benj. H. Hall, 

J. W. Freeman, Irving Browne, 

F. S. Thayer, A. H. Graves, 

G. B. Saxton, S. B. Saxton, 

G. V. S. QUACKENBUSH, J. SlIERRY, 

N. Davenport, A. B. Morgan, 

M. I. Townsend, George II. Cramer, 

Jesse A. Heydrick. 



Troy, April 2. r ( , 1865. 
Maj.-Gen. John E. Wool, Messrs. Winslow, 

Holley, Cowee, Kellogg, and others. 
Gentlemen : 

In accordance with your request I transmit to you the manuscript 
of my discourse of the 23d inst. 



Very Respectfully Yours 



MARVIN R. VINCENT. 



SEEMON. 



Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in 
Israel? — 2d Samuel, hi: 38. 

The events of history are often like figures in 
relief. We see but one side of them, that which 
the artist chooses to represent. But this is not 
an universal truth. Some events have a dramatic 
interest inherent in them. They are independent 
of the artist. Though, like the sculptor who 
would hew Mount Athos into the fio-ure of a 
recumbent giant, the historian rnay mould and 
drape and soften the lines, yet as the mountain, 
spite of the sculptor's work, would have been a 
mountain still ; so such events stand out from 
their age, bearing their own character and speak- 
ing for themselves under all the misrepresentations 
of history. They convey their own great lesson. 
They resolutely strip from themselves all palli- 
ations. 

Concurrent events, moreover, have often much 
to do with the sharpness with which these historic 
eras or incidents are cut. Often the accumulated 



li 

sentiment and action of a whole cycle concentrate 
and find expression in a Bingle event which hence- 
forth becomes typical of the cycle. Often the 
condensed power of a century is behind a word 
or a blow. Often, too, •contemporary events are 
so disposed as to heighten to the utmost the effect 
of a single deed, and to form a background 
against which its lines come out with preternatural 
shai pness. 

If these characteristics ever united in any 
event, they do so in that which brings us here 
to-day. Death is not a new event. Death in 
high places is not a strange thing, even to us who 
twice before this have been called to mourn over 
the nation's chief magistrate. Even death under 
such circumstances is not unheard of nor uncom- 
mon. Not to us alone attaches the stigma of a 
murdered ruler. But this event is nevertheless 
instinct with a horror and with a significance 
independent of our nearness to it, and our practi- 
cal connection with it. It concentrates in itself 
the elements of one tearful phase of our national 
life. It is its natural offshoot, its pet child, its 
crowning development of horror, its grand e\- 

pre8sion before the civilized world. And. at the 
same time, concurrent circumstances are such 
as to define its lines more sharply. In many 
instances, as 1 have already Baid, even the a->ns- 



sination of a man in power does not impress us 
like this event. In so many instances the man 
owes his consequence only to his position. So 
much coloring is given to the deed by his tyranny 
or inefficiency. So many conflicting interests, 
whose claims history gives us no means of esti- 
mating, have been eddying round him, and the 
moral basis of the age has been so rotten and 
wavering 1 , the moral sentiment of the aare so 
perverted, that that event seems but in harmony 
with surrounding events. But here it is other- 
wise. The nation since its rise, and more rapidly 
within the last four years, has been developing a 
process of grouping. On one side of the line 
have been ranging themselves order, the gov- 
ernment of reason and not of passion, fair and 
open discussion, patriotism, loyalty, devotion to 
the morals rather than to the politics of govern- 
ment. As an exponent of these principles, a man 
occupied the seat of power who could not, if he 
would, have been a tyrant, and who would not if 
he could ; a man whose virtues commended them- 
selves to the people, whose policy commanded 
their confidence and their endorsement. Break- 
ing sharply off from such sentiments appeared 
another group, representing treason, disloyalty, 
impatience of control, passion, disregard of the 
principle of majority rule, oppression of the 






weak, deeper degradation of the degraded, its 
principles represented by factious demagogues 
who would rather "rule in hell than serve in 
Eeaven." No distinction was ever clearer. Ever 
diverging more and more, these two develop- 
ments have gone on since the foundation of the 
Republic, until at last the distinction has culmi- 
nated. The one side has exhausted its venom in 
this crowning atrocity, and placed it in such 
startling relief against the virtues of the victim 
and the great order-loving, liberty-loving, rebel- 
lion hating, humanity-cherishing sentiment of 
the Nation, as henceforth to stamp the act and 
that of which it was tin- product with a charact* r 
which no future historian will dare to palliate, 
an d to insure to them a detestation the bitterness 
of which shall be intensified with every succeed- 
ing generation. God has-forestalled the judgment 
f history, a. .-I on this act. at Least, its decision 
shall be unanimous. 

T nere then stands the fact in its terrific propor- 
tions. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 
States, has been foully murdered H an assassin. 
Trul} the murderer musl have well Btudied the 
effeel of contrasts. Bad the deed been done 
w hen, as it is said, it was Brst contemplated, it 
m ighi have harmonized somewhat better with the 
confusion which Bwayed the popular mind, with 



the anxiety respecting - the still unfinished conflict, 
and the still menacing rebellion. But this had 
passed. Victory had perched upon the banners 
of our brave generals. The routed army of the 
Confederacy had laid down its arms. The pseudo 
President had abandoned his capital and fled, 
none knew whither. The land was gay with 
waving banners and vocal with the thunder of 
cannon and the pealing of bells ; and the Presi- 
dent, a man of the people, was rejoicing with the 
people. For the moment 

"Grim visaged war had smoothed Ins wrinkled front." 

For a moment the nation that had sailed so long 
under the gloomy, bristling head-lands of war, 
had caught a glimpse of a calm, open bay, with 
the sun of peace shining down on its green 
encircling hills. And for an hour the man whose 
shoulders had borne, for over four years, the 
heaviest burden ever placed upon any ruler, 
the man whose unceasing vigilance had been in 
demand to guide the vessel of State through such 
tortuous channels and around such reefs as never 
threatened nation before, for an hour he had 
laid aside the cares of State : for an hour lie had 
said " Good bye to pain and care :" for an hour 
he had forgotten the nation's burden and given 
himself up to the current of the nation's joy. And 
in that hour of grateful relaxation the blow fell 



10 

The assassin, inspired with hellish daring, threw 
his life upon the issue, and to-day the nation 
mourns his success. 

I will not dwell niton the horrible fact. It is 
my duty to-day to gather up its lessons as far as 
maybe; and I go back now to my introductory 
thought, that some of the deeds of history are the 
concentrated expression of a long train of pre- 
vious events, given in their expression a typical 
character to the whole. It were easy enough 
to cite illustrations, did time permit; yet it is 
unnecessary with such an illustration before our 
eyes. To repeat once more what 1 have already 
said from this place, L go back of the deed and 
of its perpetrator. 1 remind you only of the 
words of the assassin as he leaped to the floor — 
" Sic semper tyrannis. Virginia is avenged" — as 
showing that the fatal blow was struck in the 
spirit of hatred to constituted authority, in the 
spirit of devotion to that pestilent heresy of State 
Sovereignty, in ihe interest of rebellion. The 
rebellion was the direct outgrowth oi slavery, and 
the assassination of the President is the grand 
consummate expression of the spirit of slavery. 
This is not the first tine- it has struck from 
behind. It is lull of the instinct of its own 
meanness. it it is a vile thing, a sus- 
I o fals I cruel I _. 



11 

and it would fain call itself by other names, and 
make its way under a mask. But thank God its 
name is written, and to-day it stands baptized in 
the name of the devil and all his angels as the 
spirit of assassination and murder. 

For, look you calmly at this thingr. I ask the 
most strenuous advocate of slavery, if there be 
one left, whether, in reason, we could expect any 
other development I Go back to the fundamental 
principle of this institution which enables a man 
to own another, and tell me if that is a safe right 
to entrust to any man. Tell me if the testimony 
of history is not uniform on this point 1 Tell me 
if the principle which permits one man to regard 
another as a chattel is not destructive in the end 
of respect for all human right, even the inalienable 
right of life I You may put restrictions upon a 
master, forbidding him to kill his slave ; but the 
spirit which thinks nothing of whipping a man 
or degrading a woman, will only be restrained 
by policy or penalty or want of opportunity from 
going further. The moment you admit in any 
case the absolute right of one man over another's 
person or property or family, that moment you 
remove the question from its only substantial 
basis, and put it upon varying circumstances, such 
as distinctions of social position or color. Be 
what you are to-day, mentally and morally, only 



12 

black, and the planter will sell you, or whip you, 
or degrade you as readily as he would the African 
fresh from the Guinea coast. The man who is 
taughl that he is at liberty to disregard any right 
of another, is in a fair way to disregard all. It 
is dangerous to set such a principle in motion. 
You cannot stop it where or when you will. It 
lauffhs at statutes. It is like the demons in the 
old story, which were called to draw water by 
one who knew the spell to set them at work, hut 
had forgotten how to lay them again; and which 
drew and drew until they flooded his dwelling. 
You can conline the application of this principle 
to no one class. Begin with distinction of color, 
and gradually it will have come to overleap all 
distinction of color, as it has done already; for 
you know that men and women lane been sold 
in the slave marts with skins as white as yours. 
Assume that a slave woman is rightfully the toy 
and property of her m nd you lessen the 

cl for female virtue everywhere, and stop 
not short of thai state "f society which this is no 
place to lay bare, but which has hern for years 
existing at tin- South, and than which Hell itself 
can pi more revolting. Begin \\ itli 

ri'dit over a slave's person, and insensibly the 
masterspirit wil itseli over other persons; 

and if it dare not strike, will affect contempt of 



13 

wise and virtuous men, and come with its slave- 
driving- airs and its talk of " mudsills " into the 
National councils. Begin with killing- a negro in 
the heat of passion, or by the administration of a 
few dozen lashes too many, and under a system 
which finds it most politic to wink at such deeds, 
and the transition is easy to holding the life of a 
white man in light esteem. The hot blood, the 
childish view of honor which sends the hand of 
the Southern desperado to his knife-hilt or pistol- 
handle on the first fancied provocation, and which 
has made the South the favorite arena of the 
duelling code, are but other cases in point show- 
ing how disregard of one class of rights has 
begotten disregard of all. The spirit which shot 
the President in his chair is the same spirit which 
has been inflicting mutilation and death upon 
men and women who dared open their mouths to 
condemn the benignant institution of slavery, and 
sometimes on mere suspicion of their sentiments. 
It is the same spirit that struck down Charles 
Sumner in his place in the United States Senate 
for daring to hold the mirror up to slavery, and 
to call things by their right names, and which 
gave public ovations to the miscreant who did the 
deed. And if you want a catalogue without end, 
turn over the history of this war. leaf by leaf, and 
see whether the spirit of slavery can be expected 



1 1 

to respecl any right. Rights ! even the grave has 
had no rights. We have lived to see enacted on 
this land which we have claimed for Christian 
civilization, the teats that were deemed heroic, 
centuries ago by barbarians who could quench 
their rage only in draughts from the skulls of 
their slain toes. We have driven the Indian from 
his native forest, and wept sentimentally over 
the horrors of the scalping knife, only to sec the 
mutilation of the dead incorporated into the civ- 
ilized warfare of the chivalrous South, and to 
have our murdered sons and brothers dug from 
their graves, and their hones hacked into pieces 
to furnish amulets for dainty Southern dames. 
We have liv< d nol only to read of the Inquisition 
as history, but to see it revived with refinements 
of cruelty in Southern prisons. We have se< n 
even the hard mercies of civilized warfare ignored, 
and the policy deliberately inaugurated of maim- 
ing and disabling 1 hundreds and thousands of 
Northern men. Save you seen the photographer's 

WOrkl Have you marked the idiotic stare, the 

ghastly features, the protruding hones, the swollen 
joints '. Have you studied the horrors of fever in 
the stockades of A.ndersonville 1 Ho you think 
it a small cause that will send men deliberately 
across the dead-line to be shot rather than pine 
longer amid such misery 1 Did you Bee the 



15 

bread which George Stewart brought here a year 
ago, the staple of our imprisoned soldiers' fare 1 
Do you know that Libby Prison was undermined 
when the authorities of Richmond anticipated 
the approach of our troops, and that the hellish 
machinery was all in readiness to blow the prison 
into the air with its whole living tenantry 1 Do 
you remember that this very act of murder over 
which we grieve was in contemplation four years 
ago, and that only a superintending Providence 
saved Abraham Lincoln to the United States, 
and Baltimore from adding another crime to the 
murder of Massachusetts troops 1 And are you 
to think this last event strange 1 Is an assassin- 
ation out of keeping with the antecedents of slave- 
barbarism 1 No, no ! Slavery has clone this 
deed, and upon it I call down the curse of Heaven. 
I invoke it in the name of a downtrodden race; 
I invoke it in the name of the hearts it has torn, 
the domestic ties it has severed, the virtue it has 
corrupted, the ignorance it has fostered ; in the 
name of man robbed of the image of his Maker, 
and of woman shorn of her dearest and most 
sacred rights ; in the name of slave mothers sit- 
ting like Niobes all over the wasted heritage of 
the South; in the name of the blighted hopes 
and desolate hearths of the North ; in the name 
of the emaciated skeletons in our hospitals, and 



Hi 

the maimed forms that crawl along our streets; 
in the name of the mutilated and pillaged dead; 
iu the name of that bereaved widow and her 
fatherless children, and of the bereaved nation 
lying to-day in sackcloth and ashes; I call down 
upon it the blight of heaven; 1 brand it as the 
representative trampler upon human rights. Oh ! 
that when its vile head shall have been crushed, 
as crushed it will be ere long, its vestiges might 
be obliterated forever. But this cannot be. They 
will remain to bear testimony against the South- 
em lords who have fostered and fought for it. and 
against the Northern men, who, in admiration of 
its patriarchal beauties, have lavished upon it 
their sympathy, and truckled to its imperious 
demands. The reminders are written all over the 
land. The white tablets gleaming from a thou- 
sand hill-side church-yards shall tell the story. 
The rough boards that mark the thousands of 
graves by the Rappahannock and Patomac and 
Chickahominy shall moulder, but the grass shall 
grow more greenly there, and (lowers bloom more 
luxuriantly ; and even in their summer lovelin 
the voice of brothers' blood shall cry from the 
ground. The plow shall turn up mute witnes 3, 
and the fields, with their multitudinous relic- of 
battle, be vocal w ith slaver] '> reproach. 






17 

And the West shall remember it. It shall keep 
the lesson to whet its good sword, and to fire its 
heart, if ever traitors attempt a like experiment ; 
for there, in one of its quiet cemeteries, shall rise 
the monument of slave-treason's last and greatest 
victim. To the home of his early struggles and 
successes, to the home from which he went with 
prayer and faith to assume his high destiny, to 
it shall be the honored task of cherishing his 
loved remains, and his obelisk shall stand when 
our beloved land shall have emerged purified and 
triumphant from this bloody ordeal, with its 
marble finger ever pointing to heaven in protest 
against the barbarism which tore him from the 
hearts of a living people. 

But I turn now from the authorship of this 
calamity to the illustrious dead himself. 

Our late beloved President, while in no sense 
a sectional President, represented nevertheless a 
peculiar phase of our natural life — its youngest, 
its most progressive side. The West was his 
birth-place ; the West, that grand theatre where 
the pent up energy and glowing aspiration of all 
other portions of the land find ample room for 
development. While the West furnishes types of 
the best, growths of other soils, it superadds to 
them a character peculiarly its own. It exhibits 
the shrewdness of New England without its 



18 

rigidity; the geniality of the South without its 
passion. It combines the impulsiveness of the 
Carolinas, and the caution of Maine and Connec- 
ticut. In its more thinly settled districts men 
are obliged to till larger spaces. The circum- 
stances are more favorable for the development 
of strong individualities. A man cannot merge 
himself in a multitude or retire into a convenient 
obscurity. He must till a place, do a work, assert 
himself, bring out the best that is in him. or 
suffer the consequent odium. The early life of 
the President was well adapted to call out the 
practical shrewdness, the strong common sense, 
and the knowledge of men which characterized 
him. In such societies men's culture, except in 

its practical adaptations, would have been wasted. 
Men's knowledge was estimated according to its 
visible practical contributions to the common weal. 
The emergencies of that pioneer life called for 
tact, readiness, practical ability. In the develop- 
ment of these the future President was not want- 
ing in mental stimulus and training. The very 
meagreness of the sources of knowledge sharp- 
ened liis appetite for it, and perhaps contributed 
to thai characteristic thoroughness which placed 
what knowledge lie had bo thoroughly at his 
command. The conscientious carefulness so early 
exhibited marked him throughout his official life ; 



19 

so that whatever men may think of his expressed 
sentiments on any subject, his discussions always 
show an opinion laboriously and conscientiously 
formed. The freedom and geniality of western 
life, its rough but genuine familiarity, tended to 
deepen a naturally sunny and affectionate dis- 
position. No less were the circumstances under 
which he appeared in political life adapted to 
sharpen his intellect and fit him for the wider 
arena upon which lie was destined to enter. 
That close contact of political leaders with the 
people, requiring that the representatives of 
opposite parties should discuss the great ques- 
tions of the day in their presence, was unfavorable 
to superficial knowledge or evasive logic. No 
point must be shirked, however difficult, In 
the sword play of debate- before the people, 
exposed to a running fire of question and com- 
ment, with the keenest interest and the most 
intense feeling excited, he who evaded, if not 
exposed by his adversary, was discovered by the 
people, and compelled to meet the issue or blush 
for his io-norance or cowardice. From such a 
school he came to the executive chair. You 
know well how exciting and alarming was the 
crisis at which he assumed it. His own election 
had been connived at by the opposite party to 
gain a pretext for the execution of their long 



20 

cherished scheme of secession. South Carolina 
had begun the pestilent work and had turned her 
guns upon a government fortress. The executive, 
too timid, too imbecile, or too much in sympathy 
with the treason, to act, refused to lift a finger to 
strangle the infant rebellion. States were fall- 
ing into line under the new Confederacy. Its 
agents had pilfered the public treasury and scat- 
tered the public munitions. The border States 
hung wavering in the balance, an object of 
apprehension and desire to either party. The 
slavery question was presenting itself under the 
most complicated aspect — the acknowledged 
source of the difficulty, yet incapable of being- 
assailed for the time. Foreign nations were pre- 
pared to extend their sympathy only on the 
ground of a crusade against slavery, and we were 
compelled by iidelity to the Constitution, to deal 
only with the overt act of treason, at the risk of 
forfeiting sympathy and Insuring foreign inter- 
vention. The conspirators were jubilant over their 
iir.-t success, and boasting thai their flag would 

Boon wave over the capitol. (>n this scene <»i 

turmoil and danger Abraham Lincoln entered at 

■ 

his inauguration. Well might be look forward 
with apprehension. Well might be say on leav- 
ing his Western home: "A duty devolves upon 
me which La perhaps greater than thai which has 



21 

devolved upon any other man since the days of 
Washington." But once committed to his duty 
he was not the man to .shrink. He had been 
used to meeting emergencies. He had been 
trained in the school of difficulty ; and gathering 
up his manhood with a calm dignity and a child- 
like trust in God, he went forth to give his labor 
and his life for his country. It is, of course, 
foreign to my purpose to follow him through that 
administration so fruitful in events, in which the 
nation has made history faster than in all the rest 
of her life together. I desire only to bring out a 
few of those traits which most clearly illustrate 
the man, and with which the nation has been made 
familiar in his late position. His qualities of 
heart were such as commended him to all men. 
He was in the real sense of that term a hearty 
man. The expression of this characteristic was 
with him something more than that assumed 
cordiality and familiarity which is counted one 
of the politician's necessary weapons. It went 
beyond mere hand-shakings and expressions of 
good fellowship. He w^as naturally disposed to 
think well of his race. His prepossessions were 
generally in favor of a man. He would rather 
love than hate him ; and hence his feeling was 
literally cordial — the spontaneous outgoing of a 
frank and manly nature. In the theatre of his 



22 

earlier victories, lie was a man whose intellectual 
power his adversaries feared ; but lie would rather 
disarm an opponent with a good natured jest than 
with a sarcasm or denunciation. With such a 
nature, backed by a keen appreciation of the 
ludicrous, ready memory, a quick perception, a 
wide experience, his power of anecdote and 
repartee has hecome proverbial. This feature of 
his character, which has provoked the sneers of 
the starched magnates of Europe, has ever ap- 
peared to my mind as a special gift for a special 
emergency. As already remarked, such a burden 
rested upon him as seldom or never fell to any 
ruler's lot. Added to the intricacy and number 
of the State questions constantly before him. his 
natural kindness of heart rendered him accessible 
to numberless petty, personal applications which 
he would have been fully justified in committing 
to subordinates ; and that never-failing fund of 
cheerfulness, that exhaustless humor which the 
most complicated problem would so often "remind 
of a story," thai elasticity which suffered him to 
bate not one jot of heart or hope in those times 

when the strongesl held their breath, were God's 
own gifts to the care-worn man, blessed springs 
of refreshing and strength gushing up all along 
the dusty road of official duty His errors, some 
of them, l;i\ in tin' direction of his kindness. 



23 

His deep conscientiousness, his keen sense of 
justice, his unwillingness to wrong anything 
human, and perhaps his too great faith in the 
natural goodness of mankind, led him at times to 
be lenient and forgiving, when many thought 
that severity would have been but justice. His 
personal kindness had extended to his own assas- 
sin. His mnd, at the time of his death, was full 
of schemes for the forgiveness and restoration 
of the traitors who had struck at the nation's 
heart ; and if it be that the South is avenged in 
his death, she will find it to be a vengeance that 
will recoil upon her own head ; for in him she 
has lost her best friend, and however little we 
could afford to spare him, she could afford it still 
less. 

The lightness and jocularity of which I have 
spoken, were but a veil of sterner traits. They 
were but as the waving verdure, flecked with 
passing shadows, and toyed with by every wind, 
yet growing upon the everlasting hills whose 
heart is rock, and whose foundations are in the 
depths of the earth. His uprightness has passed 
into a proverb. His jest and story covered a 
strength of purpose, a rigid determination, an 
adherence to principle which no crooked policy 
could undermine, and which no bribe was great 
enough to tempt. In the real old Roman sense of 



24 

tht' term he was an honest man — an embodiment 
of manly worth and honor. Where men ormeas- 
ures stood in the way of principle they must go 
down When even plausible views of moral right 
on certain great questions were urged upon him 
by reformers, he could even consent for the time 
to be deemed false to the great objects of philan- 
thropy, rather than swerve from his conscientiously 
chosen policy. He did not consult personal pop- 
ularity. He regarded himself as the people's 
servant; and to do their work in the best way, 
and in accordance with his sworn obligation to 
the Constitution was his sole care. And the 
secret of this lay in his religiousness. From tin- 
time of his assumption of his office to his death, 
his words on all public occasions breathe a spirit 
of trust in the God of nations. As nearly as 1 can 
ascertain, morever, circumstances go to indicate 
that after his assumption of office, he became the 
subject of deeper religious experience. This sen- 
timent is the key-note of the lew words spoken 
by him on leaving his home for Washington. 
" Washington would never have succeeded except 
for the aid <•!' Divine Providence, upon which he 
at all limes relied. I feel that 1 cannot succeed 
without the same Divine aid which sustained 
him, and <»n the same Almighty being 1 place my 
reliance for support." Of him it might be justly 



25 

said, as of William of Orange, to whose character 
his own presents some points of similarity : " From 
his trust in God, he ever derived support and 
consolation in the darkest hours. Implicitly 
relying upon Almighty wisdom and goodness, he 
looked danger in the face with a constant smile, 
and endured incessant labors and trials with a 
serenity which seemed more lhan human ;" and, 
in the beautiful wor$s of him who pronounced his 
funeral eulogy, "While we admired and loved 
him on many accounts, more suitable than any 
or all of these, more hojy .and influential, more 
beautiful and strong and sustaining, was his habit- 
ual confidence in God, and in the final triumph of 
truth and righteousness through him and for His 
sake. This was his noblest virtue and grandest 
principle, the secret alike of his strength, his 
patriotism and his success. And this, it seems to 
me, after being near him steadily, and with him 
often for more than four years, is the principle by 
which, more than by any other, he being dead yet 
speaketh." 

Oh ! were it my lot to speak this day to men in 
high places, I would commend to him who comes 
to Abraham Lincoln's place, this trait above any 
in Abraham Lincoln's character. I would implore 
him by the great interests of humanity now com- 
mitted to him, in view of the fact that the ques- 
4 



26 

tions which sway the nation to-day have risen far 
above the realm of politics, into that of morals 
and religion ; in view of the insignificance of all 
human power and wisdom, in an arena where 
God is so manifestly exercising control, and shap- 
ing the age's destiny, to look to tins first of all. 
I would implore him to let the wave of prayer 
that sweeps toward him from every hearthstone 
in the hind, hear him to the secret place of the 
Most High, there to seek the leadings of that 
higher will, there to have his thought drawn into 
sympathy with the Divine purposes, there to he 
clad in the mantle of Lincoln's unswerving faith. 
and thence to come forth and place himself at the 
nation's la-ad, girt with a sublimer strength, a 
purer patriotism, and a holier wisdom. 

The elements of the President's intellectual 
character were not complex. It has been taken 
for "ranted that he did not exhibit the character- 
i>tics of a great statesman. But without presum- 
ing to deny this, I would not he too certain that 
he was wanting in the capacities for the highesl 
statesmanship. His discernment was quick; his 
power <•! generalizing not inferior: his grasp 
of a subject linn: his knowledge of political 
machinery extensive, though gathered from expe- 
rience more than from studv. His policy, as 
exhibited in his administration, was cautious and 



27 

far-reaching. To his sterling integrity and frank- 
ness lie added the wiliness of a Talleyrand. 
Under other influences, and in a foreign court, he 
might have developed into a diplomat of the first 
order. After all that has been said of his states- 
manship, it cannot be denied that he piloted the 
nation through one of the most difficult of all 
possible junctures with consummate skill and 
tact, and, the result will probably show, with as 
few mistakes as any man would have been likely 
to make under similar circumstances. His igno- 
rance or rejection of mere technicalities may, in 
some instances, have blinded superficial observers 
to the statesmanlike qualities of his mind. He 
was one of those to whom it was given to show 
the courts of Europe that the difference between 
the administrators of the old and new world is 
in the polish rather than in the temper of the 
blade. He laid no claim to the rhetorician's 
laurels, yet his public documents were strongly, 
clearly and vigorously written. His state papers 
were eminently popular documents. The discus- 
sions of political issues introduced into them were 
set forth ofttimes with familiar illustrations, 
which, while they might provoke a smile from the 
sticklers for official stateliness, imparted to them 
a wonderful freshness, and tended to root their 
principles deep in the popular mind. No Pres- 



28 

[dent has ever surpassed him, if any has equaled 
him, iii clearly defining his policy to the masses. 
His strong, practical common sense was the basis 
of his intellectual character. In his political 
discussions lie had a rare faculty of detecting and 
exposing sophistry- lie seized intuitively upon 
the vital point of every question, clearly stated 
the real issue, ranged all subordinate facts round 
this, and summarily discarded everything which 
had no relation to it. This faculty proved espe- 
cially valuable in the class of questions with 
which his administration so largely dealt. His 
strong sense saved the Constitution from its 
greatest danger, the danger of tying its own 
hands; and this was what enabled him to cut the 
GrOrdian knot where some men would have found 
themselves embarrassed by a mere technicality or 
formula. 

A recent article from the London Spectator so 
forcibly illustrates these views that I may be 
pardoned for quoting an extract: 

" Bui without the advantages of Washington's 
education or training, Mr. Lincoln was called 
from ;i humble station at the opening of a mighty 
civil war to form a government out of a party in 
which the habits and traditions of official life did 
nut exist. Finding himself the object of Southern 
abuse so fierce and so foul that in anv man less 



29 

passionless it would long ago have stirred up an 
implacable animosity ; mocked at for his official 
awkwardness and denounced for his steadfast 
policy by all the Democratic section of the loyal 
States ; tried by years of failure before that 
policy achieved a single great success; further 
tried by a series of successes so rapid and bril- 
liant that they would have puffed up a smaller 
mind and overset its balance; embarrassed by 
the boastfulness of his people and of his subordi- 
nates no less than by his own inexperience in his 
relations with foreign States ; beset by fanatics 
of principle on one side, who would pay no atten- 
tion to his obligations as a constitutional ruler, 
and by fanatics of caste on the other, who were 
not only deaf to the claims of justice but would 
hear of no policy large enough for a revolutionary 
emergency, Mr. Lincoln has persevered through 
all without ever giving way to anger, or despon- 
dency, or exultation, or popular arrogance, or 
sectarian fanaticism, or caste prejudice, visibly 
growing in force of character, in self-possession, 
and in magnanimity, till, in his last short Message 
to Congress on the 4th of March, we can detect 
no longer the rude and illiterate mould of a village 
lawyer's thought, but find it replaced by a grasp 
of principle, a dignity of manner, and a solemnity 
of purpose which would have been unworthy 



30 

neither of Hampden nor of Cromwell, while his 
gentleness and generosity of feeling towards his 
foes arc almost greater than we should expect 
from either of them." 

At once the representative facl of his adminis- 
tration, and that which distinguished it above 
anv other in our history, is its relations to the 
great question of human bondage. In this respect 
his administration forms an era in the history of 
the race. The status of the question at the time 
of his inauguration, and for a long time alter, was 
peculiar and difficult. The moral and political 
aspects of the contest were brought into apparent 
antagonism; and the foreign emissaries of seces- 
sion had UO dearer object than to prove this 
antagonism real, and thus alienate from us the 
Bympathy of Europe. Europe, knowing slavery 
to lie at the root of our trouble, expected us t<> 
strike at once at slavery. We, knowing the fact 
equally well, could, at the time, strike only at 
treason. We could deal only with the immediate 
development, not with the ultimate cause. The 
provisions of the Constitution, the divided senti- 
ment el' the North, tlie hesitating attitude of the 
border States, the general ignorance of the extent 
and maturity of the cons] iracy, made it a matter 
of the utmost difficulty and delicacy. The Presi- 
dent clearly appreciated the Bource of the diffi- 



31 

culty, and, as the result showed, had its removal 
as deeply at heart as any man. Hence, at Phila- 
delphia, prior to his inauguration, he remarked : 
" I have often inquired of myself what great 
principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy 
so long together. It was something in the Dec- 
laration of Independence, giving liberty not only 
to the people of this country, bnt hope to the 
world for all coming time. It was that which 
gave promise that in due time the weights should 
be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that 
all should have an equal chance. If this country 
cannot be saved without giving up that principle, 
I was about to say / would rather be assassinated 
upon the spot than surrender it." I need not follow 
the great question through the history of its 
solution. The world will bear testimony to the 
cautious, far-seeing wisdom with which he dealt 
with it. History will do justice to the man who 
could make impulse, however high and generous, 
stand back for duty. It will bear witness to the 
faith which could wait as well as labor ; which 
was content to let the result come out in the slow 
grinding of the mills of God, without putting forth 
his hand to quicken the machinery. It will 
record how sacredly he respected the Constitu- 
tional rights of the South ; how timely were his 
warning's; how liberal bis solicitations, until at 



32 

last, when lie saw that Grod's purpose was ripe, 
when, having kept adroitly in the rear of events. 
yet having so employed them as to make the full 
power of the popular wave bear him to Ins goal, 
he rose in bis might, and with a word that echoed 
through the world, the fetters fell forever from 
the slave. How a great moral act like this looms 
up amid the political developments of the age, 
and those tilings which more directly touch us as 
individuals — questions of financial policy, learned 
diplomatic correspondence, generals, victories. 
deeds of individual heroism, party triumphs. 
For when state volumes shall be mouldering in 
libraries, and the soldiers' children's children 
playing with his rusty sword and asking its 
story, when the names of old political parties 
shall be obsolete, and the issues which created 
them forgotten, this fact shall be fresh in the 
nation's memory. Abraham Lincoln signed the 
death warrant of American slavery. Thank God, 
" the past at least is secure." Wlmt he has done 
in this matter will not be undone. 'The moral 
sentiment of the nation, educated by the stern 
discipline of war and sorrow, lias followed up the 
blow and clinched the nail, and to-day one mighty 
will pulsates from Easl to West, thai this curse 
>liall be no more. Shut close thine accursed 
door, oh ! sla\e mart Stand in the midsl of the 



33 

Southern cities, a monument of a past barbarism, 
a haunted place past which the belated wayfarer 
shall hasten, and whose story of horror shall be 
told with bated breath. Where the auctioneer's 
hammer sealed the doom of humanity and virtue, 
let the rank grass grow, and scorpions lurk, and 
silence brood, and over its door let it be writ- 
ten — " Aceldama!' Lie still, oh ! slave ship, in 
thy port, thou whose every plank and timber 
is seasoned with bitter tears ; lie still and rot 
in the blistering sun ; let the foul slime and ooze 
gather about thy keel, and the crawling things 
of the deep, foul shapes that fisher's line never 
brought to light, lurk in thy shadow*; ' and let 
the breeze refuse to fill thine idle sails, and no 
traitorous wind ever send thee lessening down 
the west on thy mission of woe. Pile the fetters 
into the furnace, and let the molten flood pour 
forth into moulds of plow and pruning-hook 
wherewith the ransomed man shall bring beauty 
out of the wilderness, and train the clustering 
vines of the South over his cabin, his home, his 
castle, on whose threshold he shall have a maris 
right to stand and keep the destroyer from his 
flock. This land at least cannot, dare not renew 
the curse. It dare not cancel the charter to 
which Abraham Lincoln set his hand. His great 
shade would rise from the grave in it fiery indig- 
5 



nation. No, the hand cannot be found that shall 
rivet the chains again, and this deed of his shall 
stand in time to come, a monument more endur- 
ing than brass, whose inscription angels shall 
pause to read on their messages of peace. 

But he could not be spared to us longer. His 
work hc/c was done. Heaven had new and higher 
purposes concerning him which it does not reveal 
to us: and now that he has been so mysteriously 
and suddenly snatched from us, it heroines m> to 
ask with all due reverence, " What doe- it mean !" 
He must be presumptuous indeed who shall 
assume to interpret such a providence, and to say 
tor what end this blow hath fallen. We can do 
little more than sit reverently at God's closed 
gates, and wait until he shall tell us more. Yel 
there .ire some thoughts SO ualuralh suggested to 
us that we should not be justified in wholly pass- 
ing them by. 

The juncture at which the event occurred is 
significant. The President was fullv committed 
to a vigorous prosecution of the war. ami t<> the 
submission <>l the rebels as the firsl condition <>t 
peace. He was re-elected on this liasis over a 
man who, in all human probability, would have 
stopped the war where it was, patched up an 
unrighteous peace, and left the whole fundamental 
question open for our children t<> settle. Lincoln 



35 

lived to see his policy carried out — the military 
power of the rebellion broken ; and almost at the 
very hour of this consummation his life was cut 
short. I accept this as an indication that his 
work as an instrument of Providence ended here, 
and that the work of reconstruction belonged to 
other and doubtless fitter instruments. I will not 
positively assert that his policy toward traitors 
was so much too lenient that God replaced him 
by a man who, we have "ood reason to think, will 
not err in this direction. Yet I say that this may 
be so, and that it looks like it. Mr. Lincoln was 
a man whose policy was formed in the light ol 
events, and in this instance it had not had time 
to develope itself fully ; but I have no hesitation 
in saying that in so far as it had developed itself, 
it was setting, in my opinion, much too strongly 
in the direction of lenity and conciliation. We 
may talk as we will about the great right of 
freedom of speech, but if this right be admitted 
to be unlimited at all times, I cannot see but 
that a popular government like this deliberately 
exposes itself to the most mischievous of all 
results— a perverted public opinion. I see noth- 
ing in the letter or spirit of the Constitution 
which should prevent such men as Yallandigham 
and the Woods, and others who might be named, 
whose treason was open and blatant, and who, 



36 

from their public position and influence, were 
enabled to divide the North, and give aid and 
comfort to our enemies — nothing which should 
prevent their mouths being stopped, and they 
themselves being put beyond the possibility of 
doing 1 further mischief. And as for the- leading; 
traitors of the South — the men who struck their 
blow deliberately and with malice aforethought, 
who, for years before the overt act, were digging 
their mines and laying their train. I call upon 
the Christian justice and common sense of this 
nation to show cause why they should not sutler 
the extreme penalty of the law! Do we not 
vet realize the full significance of their crime ! 
Have we been so tree from the damning crime of 
treason, that we do not vet recognize it, even 
when it comes to us without pretence of disguise ! 
Do we realize the murder and outrage and deso- 
lation that have followed in its track ! and are 
we to stand here to-day and clasp their blood- 
stained hands in ours, ami welcome hack to fel- 
lowship those who only want the opportunity to 
renew their devilish work I For one, I say no! 
In simple justice no! We have been all along 
discussing this question on the basis of the right 
or wrong oJ retaliation, forgetting that thai ques- 
tion dm-- not enter into the consideration fiI all. 
The question ia simply whether we will put in 



'61 

force the laws against treason which we have 
made for our own protection. We forget that, in 
the words of our present Executive, lenity to the. 
few may be injustice to the many. By an indis- 
criminate lenity we shall only be setting so many 
vipers loose to sting and to poison. It was the 
spirit of the conquered South that smote down the 
President. The hatred of free institutions, and 
the spirit of revenge and malice have not died out 
with the military power of the rebellion. They 
are as strong to-day in the crushed and humbled 
South as on the morning when its bastard Pal- 
metto first waved over Sumter. The snake is 
scotched, but not killed. We owe something- to 
justice as well as to mercy. Something to self- 
protection as well as to forgiveness ; and in the 
name of this bleeding country, in the name of 
our maimed and starved soldiers, in the name of 
our blighted hearts and homes, I call upon gov- 
ernment to put in force against these leading 
traitors the penalty of the law. And I would 
their gibbet were so high that every man North 
and South might see it from his housetop, and 
learn as he looks that treason is not safe for the 
perpetrator : high enough for the despots of 
Europe, and its statesmen who have longed for 
the fall of the Republic, to learn that the Republic 
has yet strength enough and self-respect enough 



38 

To punish terribly those who strike at her vitals. 
Citizens of this community, gathered here to-day, 
let this be our last experience in the toleration of 
treason. It lias been allowed too much liberty 
heretofore. It is time its mouth was stopped. It' 
we cannot stop it at the South, we can at least 
stop it here. Nothing less than this is our duty; 
and let us go forth from this place resolved to 
foster a public sentiment that shall from this time 
forth sternly silence the press or the man. no 
matter what his position, that dares to lift up a 
voice in favor of extenuation of treason. 

As another lesson, we are taught to respect our 
own government more; to cherish it more fondly 
than ever. What has it done for us in the present 
crisis ! There are nations where such an event 
would have blocked the wheels of legislation, 
and thrown all things into direst confusion. To- 
day government moves on without a break or jar. 
Ere the nation's ruler is scarce cold in death. 

his successor steps quietly into his vacant place, 
without a movement or a remonstrance from the 
great nation. And the nation itself but falls back 

• 

;i pace to let the retiring leader's bier pass out. to 
loot tor one moment on his beloved tare to 
exchange a word on Ins many virtues, and then 
closes up fast and firm round his successor, wiih a 
Btemer determination to push it- great work to ii^ 

(•(iinphti" 'li 



39 

Again we are reminded " Little children keep 

yourselves from idols." As much as any other 

people we are hero-worshipers. With all our 

vaunted independence, popular leaders sway us 

mightily. All through this conflict God's voice 

has been saying to us, as one after another of oar 

trusted champions bit the dust, " Put not your 

trust in princes." I tremble when I hear men 

say, " Grant is left. Sherman is left. Sheridan 

and Thomas are left." God wants this nation to 

trust in Him, and in Him only. He comes to us 

to-day in our heart-sickness, and asks us if we 

think any man or body of men is indispensable, 

and dictates to us our lesson again " The Lord 

reigneth ! Let the earth rejoice!' And when our 

leaders fall, he bids us not to be looking back to 

the ranks, anxiously and tearfully asking : " What 

shall we do now I " but forward to where his 

pillar of fire moves steadily on through the night 

in solemn and mysterious majesty, and saying to 

our fainting hearts, " God is left ! and in the name 

of the Lord will we set up our banners." 

And this event draws us more closely together. 
Around the coffin of our beloved dead we clasp 
hands, and feel shoulder touch shoulder, and even 
amid the bitterness of this bereavement it is a 
blessed thing to know that we are more nearly 
one than ever. If the South had striven to select 



4() 

the act which of all others should concentrate 
the sentiment of the North against her. which 
should commit the whole people irrevocably to 
the completion of the work they have taken in 
hand, they could not have made a happier choice. 
It anything were needed to teach a certain class 
of Northern men the true nature and tendencies 
of the cause they have been secretly favoring, 
this deed has supplied the want Henceforth, 
brothers, we go forth more unitedly to our work. 
Henceforth the lines are more sharply drawn. 
Henceforth we know but two classes — loyal men 
and traitors. Northern men with Southern prin- 
ciples. I tdl you your skirts are not clear of the 
President's blood. You have fostered the spirit 
which struck the blow. Von have apologized for 
it. Ymi have fretted and been angry at those 
who would insist that slavery was at the root of 
that carelessness of human right and human lite, 
that mad ambition, that aristocratic folly which 
precipitated the country into war. And now the 
result has justified them. This last deed has 
crowned tic- catalogue which lias linn running 
up so rapidly for tour \ cars past ; and I do most 
of you the credit to believe that from tlii>. its last 
work, \ on shrink aghast. 1 do you the justice 
to believe thai your hearts equally with mine 
condemn this deed. I could not believe otherwise 



41 

and believe you men. And now, by the open 
grave of the nation's President, amid the tears 
of the people, by every consideration of national 
honor and self-respect, I entreat you to look 
upon the legitimate fruit of Southern principles, 
and from this time forth, in the name of God 
and humanity, come out from among them and 
be separate, and touch not the unclean thing. 

And still we linger by the open grave. One 
look more ere the clods fall and the tomb enfolds 
him in its cold embrace. Is it not some ghastly 
niffhtmare — some dreadful dream from which we 
shall awake by and by to find the nation still 
undisgraced by murder, and him still at the 
helm I Alas, alas ! the cold reality will not 
depart at our bidding. Abraham Lincoln is dead. 
Gone from a nation's burdens and a nation's love. 
Stricken down in the fore front of the battle ; his 
great work done, yet with his armor on, in the 
high noon of a noble, successful, God-fearing 
manhood. And by that sterling worth, that sim- 
ple piety, that kindness and tenderness, that never 
faltering faith in God and humanity, he, being 
dead, yet speaketh. Aye, speaketh. I hear his 
voice come down to us from the tranquil heights 
of his eternal rest bidding us be true to ourselves, 
true to our national idea, true to freedom, true 
to God, daring to be just though the Heavens 



42 

fall. I hear him saying to the nation: "Away 
with these idle tears, these vain regrets; ye have 
no time now for lamentation ; 

'The day of tlie Lord is at hand, al hand, 
Its storms roll up the sky." 

and the meekest of saints may find stern work 
to do. Up and be doing !" 

We hear thee beloved leader, and here, beside 
thy tomb, we put off our sackcloth and ashes 
and take our armor to ourselves again. V^ e 
turn our faces to the future, and from under 
the shadow of this dispensation we go forth 
with girded loins and trimmed lamps and in 
Grod's strength to work out our destiny. We 
leave thee with God on thy mount of vision, 
and press on at the beck of our new leader t<> 
that promised land which thou sawest from afar, 
but wert not permitted to enter: press on, bearing 
the inspiration of thy courage into battles yet 
to conic. And thou shalt be gloriously avenged 
one daw Thou shalt be avenged when our 

Union, tin- object of thy dearest desire, shall 
stand cemented anew, "now and forever, one and 
inseparable." Thou shalt be avenged in everj 

look which down-trodden humanity shall send 

across the sea to our land, then, as never before, 
the home ot the oppressed. Thou shalt be 

avenged when one heart and otic mind shall 



43 

animate the people ; when Americans shall know- 
no North, no South, and one starry flag, the dear 
old banner which was the joy of thine eyes, cover 
with its ample folds the children of those who 
now thirst for each others blood. Thou shalt be 
avenged when the echo of war shall have died 
out from our hillsides, and the war desolated land 
be blossoming" like a paradise beneath the willing- 
hand of free, industry. Thou shalt be avenged 
when, beneath the Palmetto's shade, Africa's sons 
shall teach their children to lisp thy name, and 
bedew thine immortal charter with their m-ateful 
tears. Oh ! even amid the grand realities which 
ere this have dawned upon thy vision, thou shalt 
not surely be so far removed from sympathy with 
the land thou lovedst and diedst for, that thou 
wilt not follow her career with thy spirit gaze, 
and smile with heavenly joy, when thou shalt see 
peace within her walls and prosperity within her 
palaces. And so, till our work be done, and 
we follow thee into the silence, we bid thee fare- 
well. Sleep ! beloved ruler ! Rest ! great, 
tender, careworn heart ! Sleep sweetly in the 
bosom of the West, while the gratitude of the 
down trodden and the love of the nation gather 
like clustering vines round thy tomb, and thy 
monument points through the years to Heaven, 



44 

telling tin* oppressed of a liberator and. the tyrant 
of an avenger. 

•• Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, 
Until ».■ doubl not that, for one bo trne 
There must be other, nobler work to do, 
And victor he must ever be. 
For ili"' the gianl ages heave the hill, 
And break the shore, and evermore 
Make and break and work their will: 
Tho' worlds on worlds in myriad myriads 1 <>11 
Round us, each with different powers, 
And oiIkt forms of life than ours, 
What know we greater than the soul? 

On God and godlike n we build our trust 

Hush I The dead-march wails in the people's ears ; 
The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears; 
The black earth yawns ; the mortal disappears; 
\-he- to ashes, dust to dusl : 
lie is gone who seemed so ureal. 
i lone, but nothing can bereave him 
* If the force he made his ow n 
Being here, and we believe him 
Something far advanced in state 
And that he wears a truer crown 
Than any wreath that man can weave him. 
Hut speak no more of hi- renov n, 
l.a\ your earthlj fancies down 
And in the vasl cathedral leave him ; 
God accept him — Christ receive him." 






